marginaletchings

[marginaletchings]

The widow of wounds

[marginaletchings]

hm. paige as the leader of a doomed congregation in a land inhospitable to many. who leaves supplies for those dammed that do not follow her lead. who cares for her people "more than god loves them". unwell.

[marginaletchings]

me trying to explain that the impossible neverending storm in the white vault is actually more terrifying than the creature thats hunting them because at least the creature has a physical body that can theoretically be damaged and a somewhat discernible motive whereas the storm is a completely uncaring nonbeing that has turned against them in a way that is meteorologically impossible and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it and it contributes to the overwhelming sense of isolation and claustrophobia of the setting by trapping them all indefinitely with no communications and its such a bizarre way for a storm to behave that its one of the key factors of their situation that makes graham admit that whatever is going on is deeply unfamiliar and beyond the scope of anyones understanding

[marginaletchings]

Murder in a cold, unforgiving place has to be my favourite kind of story.

[marginaletchings]

I need to fix the lettering since it feels off

[marginaletchings]

My morning routine as a creature in the caves of Svalbard:

4:00 am - Get up, go to the bunker and scratch on the walls. Maybe whisper a bit

6:00 am - go back to sleep for an hour

7:00 am - Wake up and have a bath in the freezing water

7:45 am - Eat some fish, a slow, relaxed breakfast

8:15 - Do my rounds of the caves, check no one has gotten in while I slept

9:00 am - If there's no one there to torment, I do some light reading

10:00 am - Sort out any new teeth boxes or just do some general tidying to make sure the ominous atmosphere remains

11:00 am - Make my way up to the bunker to destroy some equipment

1:30 pm - Lunch

2:30 pm - Make my way up to the bunker to imitate someone there

3:45 pm - Go back to the village and wander

5:00 pm - If no one has come down, I might go back up and do some more imitating

6:00 pm - check up on the snow storm

7:00 pm - My work day is over

7:30 pm - eat dinner (more fish, a polar bear or someone I caught)

8:15 pm - More reading, maybe distort the twisting passages

10:30 pm - I go to sleep

[marginaletchings]

Shared with permission from the good folks at The Gauntlet - here’s a haunting and absolutely gorgeous bit of art from @sheydgarden for the upcoming Silt Verses RPG.

[marginaletchings]

bunch of silt verses chara design sketches i did trying 2 figure out how to draw them. listen to the silt verses BTW for the love of god

[marginaletchings]

lil sketchdump for the silt verses because i miss them.....a lot.....

edit: added ID below, originally written by @princess-of-purple-prose, thank you so much!

[ID: Silt Verses fanart done in dark brown.

1. On the left, Carpenter’s narration hangs next to a portrait of Nana Glass, an older woman with fishhooks radiating around her face and curly hair tied in a high bun. Carpenter says, “Over the long years, she pierced her ears and cheeks and lips with seventeen barbed hooks of varying shapes and sizes in devotion to the Trawler-man.” A note says “*hair curls look like hooks.”

On the right, a young Em and Carpenter walk with Nana, who looks ahead as they stop to look at the corpse floating in the river. Carpenter’s narration says, “Em and I would run and play for hours in the waterlogged garden, dancing amongst the sweetgrass. Leaping over the bobbing buoys of the lifeless, sackcloth-covered heads that bobbed in rows along the shallows.”

2. The bride and bridegroom in a church. The bride is a towering hermit crab-like figure with a mostly-human torso that a long veil flows off the head of. The narration says, “And as the bridegroom staggers back, aghast, he sees the angels part, and his promised bride comes forward to the head of the procession. Swept inland upon new towering legs, smiling as she strides forwards to meet him.”

3. Mercer and Gage, smiling teens dressed in furs and skulls and carrying guns. As Gage says, “We dress in the things we kill, in sallow bone and in bloodied rough fur. Mercer's hood is topped with a goat skull; mine with the skull of a dog.”

4. Carpenter, Paige, and Faulkner in a car together. Carpenter looks tired as she drives, and Faulkner smiles in the passenger’s seat as he and a smiling Paige split a Kit-Kat. Text from the season one recap says: “MÉABH: Carpenter and Paige drag him to the car and the three best friends that there ever ever was... go on a roadtrip :)”. The words “go on a roadtrip” are handwritten in. End ID]

[marginaletchings]

If a worker who isn't the owner says ANYTHING similar to "I'm not really supposed to do this but-" and then does something that helps you, under no circumstances inform the business, including through reviews. You tell them that the worker was polite, professional, the very model of customer service and why you like to go there. You do not breathe a word of the rulebreaking.

[marginaletchings]

Historically accurate (enough) Ben Tallmadge be upon ye.

Explanation and history spiel under the cut <3

TURN did better than most period pieces with costuming so I didn’t really have to change that much (flowers for Donna Zakowska), but my own historical costuming brain was like But What If I Did?? Now I obviously took some liberties here for the sake of clarity and The Rule of Cool, but I’ll explain them when we cross the bridge. I’m also not a historical fashion expert. My end goal for this was to integrate real life concepts into the stylized depictions of the TV show.

Until around 1780, the Continental Army was notably impoverished, and had no standard uniform (and arguably it never would). Soldiers and militiamen simply wore their civilian clothes, and high-ranking officers wore repurposed uniforms from other conflicts if they had them. But for the most part, it was hard to distinguish the average private from a commissioned service member. To differentiate ranks, color-coded sashes and cockades were worn around the body and pinned to the hat. These would indicate to everyone who held which title with no uniform to go off of.

Season 1 Costume:

Some background: 1776 is widely agreed upon as the terrible horrible no good very bad year for the continental army. They were beat down and penniless. If the Americans were to ever loose the AWI, 1776 would have been the year it happened. Washington was pulling the army up by their threadbare bootstraps. The monumental loss of New York to the Brits and subsequent fleeing of the continental army to Connecticut was the main sore spot here, and in that chaos is where TURN season 1 starts.

Ben Tallmadge in TURN is a major and and Aid De Camp (he might not be officially named as an ADC but for all intents and purposes he replaced Hamilton for like 2 whole seasons so I gave him the title anyways). Prior to Washington begging congress to order uniforms in 1780, Ben would have been frolicking around in his plain clothes for the majority of the war. Men’s plain clothes of this era included the linen shirt, waistcoat, cravat, coat, breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, and a hat.

The reason cockades were chosen to denote rank is because wearing a hat in public was actually considered common decency. It was improper (or at the very least lacking manners) to not wear one out. Every man would be wearing a hat, thus they would always have their chosen cockade on display. Ben wears a red one, which signals that he is a major. In the show the hat custom is forgone in favor of actually being able to see the actors’ faces (and their amazing hair), which is totally understandable. I’ve restored Ben’s hat in my design, though.

Another thing I have added is a pair of spatterdashes, which are cloth sock things that buckle over one’s shoes and shins to keep the mud and gunk from ruining the stockings and soaking down into your shoes. Ben spends most of his time outside, and has no issued pair of boots (which weren’t really the most efficient or comfortable form of footwear at the time anyways) on account of the No Money thing, so he wears his spatterdashes to make his poor buckled shoes last longer.

In reality, Ben would have been wearing this utterly dazzling outfit until the end of season 3. However, I’ve decided to suspend the historical record and let him have a Season 2 glow-up into the blue-coated major we all know and love.

Season 2 Costume:

So after 1780 (or I guess 1777 in this case), Congress decided to fund Washington’s request for regimental uniforms across the continental army. Not everyone was wearing a blue and white coat, but Ben Tallmadge was. Turn’s portrayal of the iconic garment has the top of the coat unbuttoned to make it look less goofy, which I’ve kept here because I agree with the change. His coat is also fairly loose-fitting, which is another thing I kept because it gives the boyish yet elegant look befitting of an inexperienced yet determined continental major. Tallmadge would have only been nineteen/twenty years old at this time (the average age in the American army was sixteen), so highlighting his youth was a good decision on TURN’s part.

Buff/white (more like off-white) waistcoats and breeches were another standard item worn by all soldiers and ranking officers (circumstances permitting).

The green sash indicates his Aid De Camp status, which I didn’t include in the S1 look because it would have looked extremely strange. These may have been out of fashion by the time uniforms were introduced, but we see Washington wearing his own blue sash throughout the entire series, and Ben is the king of idolizing that man (and boasting that Washington considers him important), so I have him wearing it.

His red cockade is gone, instead the gold insignias mounted on his shoulders (these were introduced by John Hancock in 1779) tell his rank as a major. In place of a red cockade is a black and white one, which became the standard throughout all the ranks. He could have worn a cockade designed specifically for majors and ADC’s, but I haven’t seen any evidence of these being used save for hearsay and they elevate the look from foppish to full on decorative ice cream, so I excluded them.

Now down to the boots. I swiped these directly off of George Washington’s uniform, which they have displayed at the Smithsonian. It’s more likely Ben would have still been wearing that trusty spatterdashes+buckled shoes combo (this was the standard of the British forces at the time), but to honor The Rule of Cool I let him have those genre defining boots. He does see more combat on horseback as the series progresses, so the boots aren’t entirely inappropriate.

Conclusion:

Despite my obvious passion for this topic, I understand why TURN made the costuming choices it did. Having the continental army just be a group of Random Guys would have been confusing to the average viewer who does not know all this trivial nonsense. And to their credit, TURN actually did dress the nameless extras pretty appropriately throughout the whole series. I just think that showing the continentals in their true “rag-tag volunteer army in need of a shower” form, then have them progress visually throughout the show would have been a brave and effective storytelling choice. It would have been a bit ahead of its time, but now that it’s been ten years I don’t think the creators would care about me dogging on them.

[marginaletchings]

[marginaletchings]

tsv thoughts pt 2

part 1 here.

beware spoilers, etc etc.

-

imo, Faulkner and Carpenter are representatives of the River--a river still needs banks and land to wind its way through. Carpenter is still connected to the Trawlerman whether she likes it or not, likely because she is stubborn and defiant, and also because she is more or less on an 'equal' footing with him in terms of... like... she's willing to face him head on and call him on his stupid bullshit. The river is duality, it is both stubborn and ever-changing; it is consistent, and you'll never set foot in the same river twice.

crackpot theory time: the cairn maiden was the promised bride. I doubt we'll ever have the maiden's origins confirmed but I don't at all think it's an accident that Carpenter washed up at Acantha's. The Cairn Maiden is... a maiden (unmarried, virginal), veiled in white, etc. And yes, I am well aware white has been more of a symbol for death throughout history, and the veil could be a shroud. It still struck me as interesting that she is: a. a maiden and b. said to specifically wear a veil. Could explain why two gods that might be somewhat related in origin or adjacent to one another, are both seemingly attached to Carpenter.

fun fact: the acanthus flower has been used to symbolize rebirth, immortality, resurrection. What this implies for the Cairn Maiden narratively, or for Carpenter--if it says anything at all--I can't say.

[marginaletchings]

[marginaletchings]

i’m sorry i cant get over the high adjudicator stuff from this episode imagine joe biden starts a war with russia and in the middle of it he hires a sex worker that fucks him into a coma. hello do you hear this

[marginaletchings]

tsv thoughts:

spoilers, etc etc.

-

People being annoyed at Faulkner for killing Roemont and cheering on Shrue is not a double standard. I actually think Faulkner was fully justified, but I also think the move was incredibly stupid. A schism could have happened without the Gulch needing to compromise their own ways of worship, and I guarantee you a younger faith leader will always win out over an ageing and arrogant elder. The main reason I believe it was the wrong move though, is that it's another instance of Faulkner falling prey to more delusions of grandeur--not that he isn't talented or great or whatever, it's that he continuously sets up these grand expectations for himself and acts selfishly and blindly so he can, what, be remembered in the Silt Verses? He's an excellent parallel to Roemont because of this. We even see that he's struggled with his faith since the big battle at the Gulch and especially since he betrayed Carpenter. Faulkner doesn't NEED a gun, he has weapons and a whole ass congregation/religious movement behind him and he doesn't know where the fuck he's taking them.

Shrue isn't a neoliberal, y'all. @melandrops made a good post about it here (hope it's ok I mentioned you & linked, lmk if it isn't) but yeah

Shrue is an excellent parallel to Faulkner. We see them go from relatively fresh-ish politician who's out of touch enough to send godkillers after the Parish--and if I recall correctly, with the blessings of the High Katabasians--then when they start getting more doses of reality they're shown to be flexible in pivoting to other directions. And then, with each new horrifying dosage of reality, pieces of Shrue's willingness to put up with bullshit breaks away; their willingness to continue Playing the Game is shattering as their beliefs and their most sincere feelings about life/society/the world get more radicalized. We see Shrue go from "decent-ish person making too many compromises to stay complacent" to "good person with a clearer view of reality who is in too deep and has to make some big decisions on how to survive." Faulkner has gone in the opposite direction, from "powerless, but a sincere radical willing to brute force and ask questions later" to losing faith and falling into near complacency, albeit complacency of a paranoid variety. Faulkner is now in relative power, and he is willing to betray the people he loves to keep that status quo.

Some folks are a bit too hard on Shrue, imo. One of the most human things ever is the innate need in us to try and protect what little stability we have. Everyone talks big game about being revolutionaries until food and home and our loved ones are at risk. Watching Shrue be pushed and pushed until not even those matter anymore is, therefore, a fascinating and cathartic experience.